A Little Bit Gay

As Sarah left off, the bus ride to Argentina did not rock. To begin with, we left at 1 PM to arrive at 4:30 PM the next day. First we went from Sucre to Potosi, not bad, only 3 hours. Then waited for 4 hours until our bus left for the border. The road was unpaved, someone had their window open and it was about -15 F in the bus and we made some unnecessary late stops in the middle of nowhere during which the lights would turn back on immediately waking me up from the sleep I had only just begun. Then we arrived at the border at about 4:30 AM and the border doesn't open until 6 and it was still freezing outside. While we were half asleep, some touts for a bus company try to convince us to by our tickets for the bus in Argentina on the Bolivian side, swearing on God, their mothers and their families graves that the prices are no different across the border. Right we were to be skeptical and walk across the border ourselves to buy the tickets because they were half the price on the other side. The border on the Argentine side didn't open right away so we were in line for quite a while in no man's land waiting for things to get moving. Finally we made it onto a bus at 9 for 7 more hours of traveling. But, we finally made it to Salta and at the bus station was a guy who worked for the hostel that we were going to check out. So we got a free cab ride and a slightly discounted price for the beds at a pretty nice place.

Argentina was so different than Bolivia, it was shocking at first. Salta is a really beautiful colonial city but it is also very commercial and it was crazy seeing shop after shop of designer clothes for the first time since being at home. We went to the archaeological museum first to see the mummies that they have retrieved from the mountain tops on the border with Peru. They were very similar to Juanita in Arequipa, Peru, but possibly better preserved. This whole museum was about the mountain top rituals of the Incas and they had all of the artifacts that were also buried with the human sacrifices. Due to the extreme cold, these mummies have been frozen since they were left for dead and are in perfect condition: teeth, hair, skin, everything. We then went to Cathedral which was one of the more beautiful churches that we have seen in South America. It was not necessarily ornate, but it was grand. At the bowls of holy water, it also advised that use of holy water for the purposes of witchcraft is strictly forbidden.

We had an excellent dinner that night to treat ourselves after a long bus ride and a dinner of crackers and Fanta the night before. Then we left the next day for our flight to Buenos Aires at 1 in the afternoon. It is a bummer that we did not get to spend more time in Salta since it seemed like a really nice city and there were some more things both inside and outside of the city that would have been cool to see. But I suppose that there is always next time.

Upon arrival in Buenos Aires, we were picked up and brought to the apartment we are staying in. It is the apartment of the director of the program and her two kids. This place is quite nice, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and an awesome living room with a balcony. It is also in one of the trendier neighborhoods in the city. We were shown around and then told that there was going to be a birthday party later (starting at 12 or 12:30) and that we would all go out around 3. This nightlife is ridiculous, I don't know why things are so late, but if you can sleep all day then by all means it is awesome.

The birthday party was pretty fun, awkward for a while and then we started talking to a couple of guys. One person that we met is the perfect example of Argentina, or more precisely, Buenos Aires. Argentina was playing South Africa the next day in the semi-finals of the rugby world cup. At least one person at the party was wearing an Argentina rugby jersey. This kid is wearing the South Africa jersey. We were talking for a while and then I ask him why and he replies with a shrug, "It matches my shoes, I'm a little bit gay." Brilliant. We ended up going to a club around 3 and staying there until sometime after 5 at which point Sarah and I left early leaving everyone else there.

Sunday was a day of recovery, with a little food shopping and watching rugby and that is about it. We found a great bar the day before that is a brewery, so we went back there for the rugby game which Argentina lost and we wandered home for a ridiculously long nap that ended around 12:30. Since Monday was a holiday, our hosts went out but we stayed in and watched tv until going to bed, super exciting.

We finally got out to do some sightseeing on Monday only to find most things closed because of the holiday. But we walked from our house all the way into the center of town to the Plaza de Mayo in about 2 hours. Along the way, more random encounters! We ran into the couple that we did our Machu Picchu tour with and had a little chat with them. It is strange that even though we take different routes, we can still run into the same people weeks after first meeting.

We checked out the Cathedral on the north side of the plaza first. To begin with, it looks like the Pantheon with the very shallow triangular roof and pillars out in front. Inside is very beautiful though and very well preserved and taken care of. Inside is the tomb of Jose de San Martin, a general that helped win Argentina's independence. His grave is guarded by soldiers like those outside Buckingham Palace, the ones that don't move but look pretty cool. Like Salta, the church was not too ornate (with the exception of the altar of solid silver) but very grand. All that walking is quite tiring and the weather wasn't great, so we went back home until dinner.

Tuesday was our first day of work here. We had to go into the office a little early for our entrance interview, just to know a little about us and what our interests our and how we can best help the organization. There are a lot of foreigners volunteering there and you can sign up for whatever activities you want to volunteer for each week. It is a pretty cool system. We opted for English tutoring our first day. We went out to El Jagual, a slum on the outskirts of the city, to a little building (it is a stretch to call it a community center) for our English classes. The kids are all between about 5 and 12, so it is not actual English lessons. We had the older kids go over animals using word searches and then quizzing them while the younger kids pretty much just sat there drawing or playing with Sarah's earrings or the tiny puppy that one kid brought in. In the end, we just ended up playing a game outside with a ball that the coordinator brought with her. It was a lot of fun and we will be going back there on Friday to work again.

I am going to leave off here because it is a pretty long post and Sarah will continue soon.